Benchmark Labs

Market position

Positions itself against legacy weather providers and government agencies whose models produce forecasts for grid cells rather than specific locations, arguing that such coarse forecasts are inaccurate for users occupying their own microclimates. It has expanded from agriculture into renewable energy, offshore wind, oil and gas, construction and worker safety.

Point-specific rather than area-averaged forecasting; bias correction of existing public models using customer-site sensor data; no requirement for proprietary hardware, which the company contrasts with solutions requiring sensor replacement costing up to $1 million; continuously retrained, location-specific models; and a stated accuracy improvement of up to 85% versus the National Weather Service.

Technology

Machine-learning models are trained in cloud computing environments to downscale and bias-correct forecasts from the National Weather Service and other grid-based providers to specific points of interest, assimilating data from in-situ sensors at customer locations. Models are location-specific and dynamic: the company reports training more than 1,500 models per week, retraining hourly as new data arrives, and adjusting neural-network parameters weekly for each location. Google Cloud Platform was used for prototyping advanced models and Gemini is used internally for business intelligence, data collection and analysis.

Go-to-market

The company markets directly through its website and API, partners with IoT hardware manufacturers to reach existing sensor users, and has used accelerators and industry programs for customer discovery and distribution, including the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, Black & Veatch's IgniteX Accelerator, Chipotle's Cultivate Next portfolio and Google for Startups programs such as the Latino Founders Fund and Sales Academy.

High-value land managers and fixed-asset operators globally, including farmers and commercial agriculture operations (for example avocado growers in California), conservancies, renewable energy and offshore wind operators, oil and gas operators, construction firms and land managers.

Geography

Headquartered in San Diego, California, with services marketed globally; offshore wind activity is conducted through the New York-based Offshore Wind Innovation Hub at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

History

Founded in 2019 with an initial focus on microclimate forecasts for agriculture. In March 2022 the company was named a Cool Company by Connect San Diego and CEO Carlos Gaitan was featured on Successful Farming Radio; the same month Tom Cuppernull joined as Chief Product Officer and in April 2022 Marshall Borrus joined as a Deployed Engineer. In November 2022 the company launched in-situ evapotranspiration forecasting globally. It received support from Google's 2023 Latino Founders Fund and joined the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub program, extending its technology to turbines and buoys. In March 2025 it announced a collaboration with Seeed Studio on offshore vessel safety; in September 2025 it joined Black & Veatch's IgniteX Accelerator; in October 2025 it was featured in Google's 2024 Economic Impact Report as its California representative. SafeCast was named a 2026 Edison Awards finalist in February 2026, and in July 2026 the company joined Chipotle's Cultivate Next portfolio.

Risks & controversies

CEO Carlos Gaitan has publicly described difficulty raising venture capital as a Latino immigrant founder, noting reliance on competitive government funding sources such as NSF SBIR and NASA grants, and has described the U.S. immigration system as an obstacle for scientist-founders building companies.